To create photorealistic astral and astronomical designs, Digital Heavens offers an update to their Cosmic Pack action sets for Photoshop, bringing their offering up to version 3. Their jaw-dropping planetary and outer-space effects suite still does an impressive job of taking your designs where no design may have gone before, but with some stellar additions.

To improve the realism, new polar regions let your mind’s eye see what it might anticipate from your new home planet. The improvement to the creation of a sun is also a nice update; however, unlike some of the one-button effects, the galaxy action takes some additional finesse in order to seem realistic.

It would be nice to have an output resolution option for Web, print, HD, and custom options, given the default 20×20″ at 300 dpi for most effects that the actions create in a new window. Cosmic Pack 3 is taxing on the RAM and processor, but it’s still an improvement over the previous version. Having newer hardware is always a good thing if speed is the key, but like many actions sets, waiting as the scripts run through their routines is part of the process.

Once again, Digital Heavens is light years ahead of many similar products by making the creation of stellar, and even interstellar, images easier at a very down-to-earth price. Be sure to check out their add-ons, too.